Reality Check Documentary

In this episode we are going to be talking all things America's Next Top Model plus some of the new foods I have tried lately. It is all due to a documentary I watched on Netflix just recently.

Here is a link to my other podcast-

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-simple-discussion/id1843198044

https://open.spotify.com/show/6dTngjtXoqqBomtzGyzKFH?si=ace2e9b7a790438d

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Hello, and welcome back to the Let's Talk podcast. My name is Hannah Covington, and I'm glad to be back with you for another episode. But before we dive into today's topic, I want to talk about some other things real fast. The first one being, I am very grateful for you guys, and I want to thank you for the 75 downloads you have given me over the last couple of months. I am so grateful. And I have only launched this podcast back in January. So I was not expecting to get to 75 downloads this fast. And I am super grateful for that. And I wanted to say thank you so much for that. And another thing I wanted to say, other than that, is hope everybody has filled out their brackets for the basketball tournament that has just started. Hope you guys are lucky. I hope it is a friendly competition. This is the first year I am actually filling out a bracket. Yeah, I I am doing it with a group of people and uh wish me luck because I'm so nervous I won't do well. But let's hope and see how far your girl makes it. And wish me luck because never have done this, and I am very excited to do this. So hopefully by the time this episode is out, I hope your brackets are going well. Hope you are participating in it somehow. I know it's not pop culture related, but it seems to be coming a bigger phenomenon as the years have gone on since I was a kid, and there was very many opportunities you could have filled out a bracket, either by local radio stations giving away money and TVs. Yes, you are hearing me correctly. Some radio stations are giving away money and TVs, or just doing a friendly competition with friends and family. So I hope you guys are participating in that. And something else I wanted to talk about real fast is I have tried some new foods because everybody is always interested in what have I tried lately? I get asked this constantly by one of our radio DJs here in my hometown if I have tried anything new. And I have, if you haven't listened to the Alani New episode, I gave my thoughts on two of the new Alani New flavors that have come out so far this year. Go listen to that episode if you want to hear my reviews on that. But I am going to talk about two candies I have tried just today because I went to Kroger Hungry, which is a poor decision because when you're hungry, you grab any kind of food that sticks out to you. I do not recommend going to the store hungry, but your home girl did, and I know I'm not the only one here that does it. And the two and the two things I've tried had caught my attention over the last couple of months. Well, one of them did. And the first one I'm gonna talk about is Ghirardelli made these Dubai chocolate truffles. I had been seeing it out of the corner of my eye at Kroger for the last couple of months. I didn't think I was gonna buy it and try it because Dubai chocolate is very expensive, if you know, you know. And I was like, I don't know if it'll be good in a truffle form. But today, since I was hungry, I was like, let's buy a bag and try it. And I'm gonna say they are phenomenal. I would highly recommend to try it if you are a Dubai chocolate fan. You get a good sized bag of them, good to share with people, unless you're not feeling like being the shareable type. That's totally fine too. I am the shareable type and I will share with people. And the other thing I grabbed, well, I grabbed three things to try. I only tried two of the three. The other one I'm gonna say for another episode to try because I'm gonna try to make this a segment on the podcast, as well as trying new things and talking about it at the beginning of the episode, so y'all can hear what I have tried. It's not gonna be in every episode, but I'm gonna try to make it a part of my episode so y'all have something to try after you after you listen to every episode. The other thing I tried was brought up to me by a family member at a weekly dinner because they had just had it a couple days prior, or a couple weeks prior. I don't know, but they were talking about this item because we were talking about Reese's, or we're just talking about candy in general. I don't know what led to this, and they had mentioned the Reese's big cup with caramel in it. I had totally forgot that Reese's had made this, completely forgot they had made this, and I was like, huh, I forgot they had made this a couple years ago. It hadn't caught my interest until a family member talked about and said it was really good. And I was like, okay, I will try it, I'll buy it. Yes, when you're hungry, you buy stuff you usually don't buy. And I have tried it, and I'm gonna say, for someone that likes caramel but not a big fan of caramel, it was pretty good. Never thought peanut butter, chocolate, and caramel would go well together. It was really good, and I'm glad this family member told me about this Reese Big Cup because when I get the Reese Big Cups, I mainly like the lava Reese Big Cup. That's my go-to if I'm gonna get the big cup. If I am leaning towards the Reese Big Cups, I haven't bought Reese's in a while, and it's one of those I never thought I'd buy and try, and it was well worth a try. And I think it started with we were talking about Easter candy and filling Easter eggs for churches for the little kitty Easter egg hunts, which led to us talking about Reese's. And we also talked about Reese thins. Don't knock it until you try it with Reese thins as well. I don't want to go retry them when I've had them multiple times. I've had two different flavors of the Reese thins, and they're so good. I love the white chocolate Reese thins. I know I'm a big peanut butter girly, but it's the right ratio for the white chocolate and the dark chocolate. Both are good. If they were my Easter eggs, I would not be mad at all. I love I love both of them. I truly do. You can never go wrong with a normal size Reese or a Reese's Thins. So if you're looking for some candy this year to put in Easter baskets or just for yourself because you're craving a little something chocolatey. I know we all crave a little chocolate. You should go and try these. Highly, highly recommend that. But moving into today's topic, which is something I didn't think I would be doing an episode on, by the way. I thought it was something, oh, I'm just gonna watch it. It won't make a good episode, by the way. Until talking with other people about it, I thought about it late last night and was like, this could be a really good episode. Most of my episode ideas come to me either while I'm waiting for a ball game to start, by the way, or late at night after I've had a good conversation with people. I'm I'm giving you my thought process of how episodes come to be in my lovely, beautiful brain. Yes. I was thinking about after having that conversation of would this be a good episode idea? And I was like, I think it would because it was the talk of the town when this documentary first came out, especially on Netflix. I think it was in the top for a while, if I'm understand correctly, next to Bridgerton, because I think it came out about the same time Bridgerton did. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I went about two weeks without Netflix. Side face. I love to watch Netflix other than YouTube when I have some free time, or if I'm not reading, which I'm looking forward to the March book report. Can't wait to talk about that. So excited. But the documentary I am going to be talking about is reality check, America's next top model. I know some people are not documentary watchers, but your homegirl is. I love watching a good documentary, but it caught my interest. And did any of y'all grow up watching America's Next Top Model? Because I vaguely remember watching bits and pieces of it. Like if I went to certain restaurants and it was on, but I didn't watch it religiously like other documentaries or not documentaries, reality TV. Woo! Game my wordy mixed up here. Go me. I was more of a Project Runway girly growing up, but I watched bits and pieces of America's Next Top Model. It was a very interesting show. It caught my interest at times, but not enough to make me want to watch it. But when I heard there was a documentary, I'm like, so what was going behind the scenes of this show? How was this show created? And was the atmosphere really a healthy atmosphere? These are all thoughts that run through our head when we're watching these pretty awesome shows that we're watching. And it was interesting to learn of how the show came to be. Because I'm gonna start with my first bullet point that I have written down is what did I learn from the documentary? This was a three-episode documentary. I think it could have possibly been four episodes, possibly, like going even more in depth, I think, but it all depends on how much content you get when you're making and interviewing people. And I think they did a phenomenal job. It's one of the best documentaries I have watched in a good hot minute. And it's been a while since I watched a documentary. Ooh, that is saying something because I don't remember when I watched my last documentary. Actually, I do remember because I re-watched a documentary I had watched before and someone recommended it to me. I was like, okay, I'll just watch it again. But what did I learn from the documentary? Ooh, that is gonna be so hard to get back on topic. Is it started out as a great idea in that the host of the show and executive producer Tyra Banks was wanting to give an opportunity for everyday women to fill their dreams of becoming a model, so it's it started off positive, that later turned not so great from as the show progressed in years. The show I think lasted until I was in high school, if I am understanding correctly, and that the show was a very positive atmosphere in the beginning, but as the years went on, it was getting more and more toxic, and that it destroyed some friendships along the way, which is even more sadder. I it broke my heart, and that some people are not talking to each other, some people's lives got destroyed because of the show, and that doing the show really didn't help these women that went on the show, is what I'm understanding. And also I learned it came to Tyra after she had had a successful career of sorts, because she was the first black model to become pretty big in the modeling industry. From what you learned during the first episode, was she had a hard time as well, but she made it because she does talk about her career at the beginning before the show ever came to be. And that it just came to her one day of how could I help everyday women accomplish their dreams of becoming a model? Is what I learned from the show, and that she had created some good friendships with some people, one of them being Miss J, and the other being uh other person being Jay as well, which was really cool to see was she had created some good friendships, and she knew oh, these bonds are never gonna break. Well, later on the show later on in the show, you learn they did break, and that it was not a great atmosphere for that, which is actually kind of super super sad, I think. They could have handled it a ton better in my eyes. So and there's just a lot going on in this show. And how were contest how were the contestants treated? I found this to be super super interesting. The first season was totally fine, is what it sounds like to me. Was like everything went very perfectly, it got high, high ratings, contestants were treated greatly, you really didn't hear any negativity from contestants of the first season. Other than I think one person tried to get into the modeling world and was not successful out in California. Yeah, California. But some of the contestants started having body issues, by the way. I later learned that there was some body imaging problems, if I am understating this correctly, which is super duper sad. You should never have body imaging problems, but some of them did. Because you look at some of them nowadays from when they were on America's um next top model, some of them were sticks, and then now they're just at a normal weight, and even one of them said she was at a healthy weight, and they wanted her to lose even more weight, which was even sadder. I'm like, why would you tell someone who's at a healthy weight to lose more weight? Like the body can't even physically do that, that's even sadder. And and two other contestants from a different season were told to fix their teeth. Literally, one woman had to get teeth pulled while another had to get a gap fixed, which I was like, that woman who had to get their gap fixed was so unhappy. And I've met so many people who have a gap in the front of their teeth and love their gap, and they just would never want to fix it because they own having that gap in front of their teeth as adults, and I admire them who do do that, but this model who was told to fix it, she was very much against getting that gap fixed, and I agree, she shouldn't have had to get it fixed. It's what made her different, made her unique. That's what gets you in the industry is being unique and being different. That's the same with the media industry, I'm gonna be honest, is you need to be different. And she was told you need to fix your teeth and get rid of that gap. And then a season or two later, they told another girl, oh, you don't have to fix your gap. And you're like, What is wrong with them? You told one girl to fix it, and then another girl comes around probably a year or two later, and you told her, Oh, she doesn't have to fix it, which is mind-boggling in my eyes. I would have been like, I was thrown, like I I felt like I was mentally losing it when they were talking about it. I was like, that's so messed up on so many levels. I I feel so bad for this person. And also some of the challenges these contestants did were so messed up as well, especially if they had to work with a different gendered model, because sometimes these different gendered models did not treat the women right. I'm not going into detail about that because this is a friendly podcast, but you can picture what went on. Now they were given opportunities to go to different countries if they'd never been to countries. Some of the places they went that they talked about in the documentaries, they went to Italy, they went to Africa. Those are two I can name off the top of my head that have been mentioned in the documentary. There was probably other places they went I can't name off the top of my head. But the show made sure these contestants after season one got to go to some pretty awesome countries, which I think is very, very cool. Would I try out for a show just to do that? No, I'm gonna be honest with you, I would never do that. But the 2000s were known for creating these crazy reality shows. Other things that happened with the contestants, some of the challenges, I'm gonna be real, they put their bodies through some crazy stuff with these challenges, from what I heard. From swapping ethnicities, I don't even want to go into that. That blew my mind of what happened with that challenge, to just being pushed outside of their comfort zones. And some of them did not like those challenges. And one of the challenges that was brought up that one girl got voted off because of this reason, but she had the most common sense out of all the contestants that season. She started reading the teleprompter and she said, I can't do this, because she knew something that the other contestants would not speak up about, and I praise her for it because at least she had the guts to speak up for herself, even when it got her voted off, and she wasn't the only one voted off that day. Another girl was as well, which was even sadder. It's almost as if the judges were ruthless to these contestants, and it was so wrong, so wrong in so many levels. That is why one of the mentors was ready to leave by close to the end of the series because he started seeing things and he was not okay with. He didn't like how contestants were being treated, and he didn't like that it was kind of also pushing some of his views on things as well. He tried to get out of the show, he wasn't able to get out of the show, which was even more sad. He should have been able to get out of the show because you have rights as a person to get out of shows, but he was not able to, which is even sadder. It it's just a very sad case of what happened on the show, and should have and should the show have been canceled at some point? Yes, it should have been canceled before 2016, but the show was not canceled because it was bringing in so much money and so much viewership that the company it was with did not want to get rid of the series, which is even sadder, because we all know there was probably a certain point in this series it should have been canceled because there's been some ser some top reality shows that have been canceled after it hit a certain wall of okay, this is not okay. And one of the things being was when Tyra Banks fired her top three people, apparently it made headlines and I did not see this. I must have been in high school, middle school, high school when this happened. I don't even remember that happening of her getting rid of her top three people who had technically been with her since the beginning of the series or early years of the series. If you understand what I mean, I didn't, I just didn't know that had happened. I was stuck in my own world of those days. I didn't know it happened until I was watching the documentary and it opened my eyes up. Yeah, she destroyed having these friendships with these people, and she does not realize. That and she has not even spoken to these people nor apologized to these contestants she has hurt, because even the contestants who were hurt by the show, which I had not mentioned, have not gotten apologies really from Tyra as well, and I think Tyra should have given her apologies to some of these contestants who have been hurt by her because cameras did follow contestants in their most vulnerable of moments, by the way. The show the documentary did talk about that because some of the contestants felt there was zero privacy, and then you have one of the execs saying, Well, they knew what they were signing up for. And I'm like, Yeah, but they also knew they needed some privacy, and they were given zero privacy, by the way. Zero zitch nada. That's one thing I think I don't watch much reality TV anymore. Is I was starting to notice as I've gotten older in my years, I'm still young at heart, I'm still young, that sometimes reality TV does not have many boundaries. And I really noticed after watching this documentary was the fact of contestants really haven't had much boundaries, and they were pretty ruthless when watching America's next top model documentary, which is surprising. And I am gonna move to this topic because I've kind of been going around it. Was who was the most toxic person? I would like to say who I think it is. I think it's the executives uh the TV company they were working at, but it was also Tyra Banks. You have the head TV execs wanting certain things, and then you have Tyra who's listening to them, which slowly made her into a toxic person because she used to be a sweet, kind person when the show started, by the way, and that everybody loved her, and she still had that sweet loving personality until this documentary came out, and I was like, I was like going, oh Tyra seems like a great human being, and she seemed like a nice person to talk to. And then I've watched this documentary, and I'm like, does she show toxic qualities that people don't realize? Is what I'm wondering in my head as I was watching this series, as the documentary slowly went on through these three episodes, because number one, she never apologized for what she did. She yelled at a contestant, yes, yelled, and then she said, Well, yelling means loving. And I'm like, No, it doesn't. You don't yell if you love a person, especially if you treat them like family. You would give them space and comfort them is my thoughts. I don't know. Someone tell me how how does your family treat each other? But I know yelling is not the proper way, and what she said to that contestant, I 100% do not agree with at all. And she was even followed when she left that thing, um, where she got voted off, and uh it sounded like once she left it, she went into a stairwell and just cried, is what uh she said, and I was like, that's so sad, you shouldn't have to sit there and cry, which is actually very, very sad. And apparently when one of the uh judges or I don't know what they held, but they helped with the show, and a and apparently some not nice comments were said off camera, and they said, I don't wanna want to repeat those words, which made me even sadder to hear. So these contestants had to deal with Tyra, and it sounds like she slowly became a toxic person, and even people close with her felt like uh oh, she is toxic, which is even something I was I would have never thought Tyra Banks would be, which I'm wrapping my brain around. How can you go from being a sweet, amazing human wanting to better people's lives to nobody wants to be around you, and you destroy friendships and don't even want to rekindle them? And some of the comments she said was, Oh, I'll get around to calling them. That is literally what she said to these people interviewing her for the documentary. I was like, so you're literally telling these people that you'll get around to calling these people that used to be your good friends who helped create the show with you, and you still haven't done it in the last five or six years since the show has ended, makes me wonder her uh her as a person, which is even sadder. Because one of the head people of the show had literally had a stroke a year before the creation of this documentary, and Tyra never visited him at all when he was in the hospital recovering from a stroke, which was even sadder. But the other two people did and made sure to be by his side the entire time while he recovered and talked about that was the best he had talked in a long time since before the stroke. They're like, that's the best he sounded, and I was like, and the person who even had the stroke said, yeah, Tyra never came and visited me in the hospital, which makes me want to cry. Because the people you care about, you go and visit them at least every once in a while while they're recovering from stuff. I would even do that, but Tyra had no interested interest in checking on this person, which makes me want to cry. She hasn't apologized to contestants, hasn't even caught up with these people. I don't know where she stands since America's next top model ended. There was so much that went on in this documentary and just processing what happened, and I don't want to go into details because I want y'all to watch this show this documentary and just grasp your own thoughts. Because I re-watched a hint of the first episode before I started recording this episode because I want to re-grasp why I wanted to watch this documentary, because I kind of watched this documentary over a two-day span. By the way, it's so good, you'll watch it probably in 24 hours. I'm not gonna lie. I just had a lot of stuff going on, and that's why I couldn't finish it in a 24-hour span. Because sometimes you take a while to watch documentaries, I'm gonna be real. But it was a very eye-opening documentary, and which other reality shows should have a documentary like this that could lead to more seasons of reality check? Because I am curious because the the 2000s was the era of some interesting reality shows. I would like to hear about the behind the scenes of Survivor, because we all know there's stuff that went behind the scenes of Survivor that we might not agree with, and some people have been open about it on social media, by the way. Project Runway, because Project Runway is kind of like America's next top model, that could be interesting. I would like to see that. And another one that got mentioned to me that I really didn't think about was American Idol. I would have never thought of American Idol as an option. I was like, you know, you're on to something, is those were some top reality shows back in the 2000s, and Survival and Survivor, Survivor and American Idol are still popular to this day. Actually, Survivor just hit their 50th season, and American Idol relaunched after COVID, after being on a hiatus for about five to six years, if I'm right. And the voice might be interesting to have a documentary like this, because you know these singing shows might have some dirty little secrets we don't know about and we might want to know about. You know, your homegirl likes a good documentary, and this one is well worth the watch if you were alive during this time or have watched it. And why this documentary actually came to be, I'm gonna talk about this before I end this episode, is it came to be people were watching TV quite a bit during COVID when the world shut down. Now, your homegirl was not in that club because she was doing about four college classes, so she was not spending much time watching TV. She did a straight year of school during the lockdown we had. So I I barely had time to watch any TV. But they were talking about at the beginning of the documentary about how America's next top model kind of was reinvigorated because of the lockdown, which was very interesting, and that why I think the idea of this documentary came to be was a bunch of people got on probably Instagram and TikTok and possibly Reddit and YouTube because they were giving their reviews on America's Next Top Model. Of going, was this okay of what was happening? And they showed some of those clips from all these social media pages, and it's like, is this how this documentary came to be? Was because of all these younger generations watching America's Next Top Model for the very first time, and they're giving their reviews and they're like, was this okay? Of what happened? And that makes me pick my brain of was it okay what happened back in the 2000s on reality TV shows? It started out as a good idea, but then went the other direction. I would like to hear your thoughts if you grew up watching America's Next Top Model, or if you've watched this documentary, please let me know in the comments. We have comments, please tell me your thoughts on this documentary. I would like to know, because I know I'm not the only documentary watcher here, and I know this documentary was a pretty popular documentary on Netflix, and this show was popular back in its day, heyday, when watching, I know apparently it was water cooler talk back in the day, as they say in the early 2000s. So I hope you and I hope you have enjoyed today's episode. See you next time. Bye.